The Backbone — Episode 37: An Inside Look at Salesforce’s $689M Acquisition of Buddy Media & Lessons Learned from Raising $150M+
Oliver Bell, CFO at Springbot
On this episode of The Backbone I chat with Oliver Bell, CFO at Springbot.
On to the show today, I’m thrilled to welcome Oliver Bell, Chief Financial Officer at Springbot. Based in Atlanta, Springbot provides advanced eCommerce marketing technology for small to medium-sized retailers.
At Springbot, Oliver oversees Finance, Legal, HR, and Revenue Operations. Prior to Springbot, Oliver spent four years leading Finance and Operations at Braze (formerly Appboy) leading the company through multiple funding rounds including its most recent $80M raise in September 2018 at a $850M valuation. Before Braze, Oliver led the Revenue Operations team at BuddyMedia which was purchased by Salesforce for close to $700M in 2012. Post acquisition, he spent about three years leading a variety of teams inside the Salesforce Marketing Cloud. A Boston native, Oliver graduated from Harvard College, where he also received his MBA.
On this episode of The Backbone, I chat with Oliver about:
- His your journey into tech and finance over 15 years ago, with stints in companies like Google to Buddy Media, (acquired by Salesforce) to the SVP of Finance and Operations at Braze, prior to Oliver’s current gig as the CFO at SpringBot.
- SpringBot — what the company does and what is it all about and why he decided to join the company.
- The experience leading up to the Buddy Media acquisition and exiting to Salesforce for $689M. We go behind the scenes to the months leading up to the acquisition discussing things that Salesforce did really well as an acquirer and what could they have done better.
- Lessons learned from Oliver’s 4 years at Braze, leading 3 fundraising rounds, with $150M of total capital raised including Series E (Sept ’18) at a $850M valuation. During Oliver’s tenure, the company grew from 40 people and $5M ARR to 300 people.
- The biggest misconception about the finance function within a technology company.
We close things off with a quickfire round:
- Your go to online resource for all things startup finance related
- Your favourite productivity hack
- Tech jargon that makes you cringe
- The best advise you’ve received
- One thing you don’t leave the office before finishing
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Check out previous episodes of The Backbone
Episode 36: Key Considerations + Metrics for Expanding a Localized Marketplace w/ Corey Noyek, Finance Manager at Platterz
Episode 35: Getting Dirt Underneath Your Fingers as an Operator w/ Tom Finn, VP Finance at Solstice
Episode 34: An Inside Look into Lightspeed’s $275M+ IPO & Scaling a Global Organization w/ Brandon Nussey, CFO at Lightspeed POS
Episode 33: Behind the Scenes of SnapTravel’s $21m Slam Dunk Series A from Steph Curry w/ Ankur Bansal, Head of Finance and Business Development at SnapTravel
Episode 32: A CFO Must Master Being a Capital Allocator w/ Sujeet Kini, CFO at Solium Capital
Episode 31: A Former Banker + Growth Investor Turned Operator on the Consequences of Raising Too Much Capital w/ Steve Isom, VP Finance at Flywheel
Episode 30: Customer + Revenue Churn at a SaaS Company with Recurring + Services Revenue w/ Cory Michalyshyn, CFO / COO at Solink
Episode 29: The First 100 Days as a Finance Leader of a Venture-Backed Startup w/ Bryn Knox, Head of Finance at BenchSci
Episode 28: Scaling a Finance Function of a High Growth Company with Strategic & Institutional Investors w/ Tiffany Hsiao, VP Finance at Rubikloud
Episode 27: Raising a $27M Financing Round & Managing the Ever-Changing Priorities as CFO w/ Dave Pooley, Chief Financial Officer at Axonify
Special Feature: Exploring a New & Revolutionary Revenue Model for Education w/ Austen Allred, Co-Founder and CEO of Lambda School
Episode 26: Lessons Learned from Raising $32M Growth Round + the Symbiotic Relationship Between Finance & Operations w/ Samiksha Khanna, VP Finance and Operations at Uberflip
Episode 25: Correlating Non-Financial Metrics into Financial Outcomes + Balancing Ad-load & Revenue Generated Through Sponsored Content w/ Trisha Egberts, Finance Manager at Figure1
Episode 24: Learnings from Starting and Shutting Down a Startup + Balancing Multiple Product Stakeholders w/ Mark Jarvie, VP Finance at Drop
Episode 23: Learnings from Raising/Exiting $700M+ in Deal Value for Software + Hardware and the Importance of a People-First Approach in Finance w/ David Brennan, Chief Financial Officer at Ecobee
Episode 22: Raising $47M from Strategic vs Traditional VC & the Level of Finance Leader to Hire at Each Stage of a Company’s Evolution w/ Danielle Cerisano, VP Finance at League
Episode 21: Using Analytics and Predictive Models to Improve Budgeting + the Role of Attribution in Assessing Digital Marketing ROI w/ Emma Lyndon, CFO at Canopy Labs
Episode 20: Considerations for CAC and Churn in a Self-Serve Pricing Model w/ Matt Dove, VP Finance at Celtx
Episode 19: The Journey of Raising $100M ICO (Initial Coin Offering) as a Venture-Backed Unicorn w/ Brandon Brunet, Controller at Kik
Episode 18: Bootstrapped to $12M Series A & What it Means for the Finance Function w/ Jennifer Pollock, Director of Finance & Operations at RateHub
Episode 17: The Added Complexities of Hardware Tech Companies & How to Price a New Medical Device w/ Travis Phung, Director of Finance & Administration at Exact Imaging
Episode 16: Monetizing a Free Product & Navigating Complexities of the Financial Services Space w/ Brian Wu, Finance Lead at Borrowell
Episode 15: Serving the Restaurant Industry & Breaking Into Tech in a Finance Capacity w/ Rob Curcio, Director of Finance at TouchBistro
Episode 14: Scaling the Finance Function, Fundraising, Making Acquisitions & Operationalizing Metrics w/ Ryan Magee, Chief Financial Officer at Cority
Episode 13: Serving the SMB Market at a Publicly Traded Software Company vs a High-Growth Startup w/ Darren Wood, Director of Finance & Operations at Jobber
Episode 12: Leading Finance at NPOs to High Growth Tech & Bootstrapping vs Raising Venture Capital w/ Anthony Scolaro, VP Finance & Operations at Lucova
Episode 11: Raising $17M Series A Round & What it Means to be ‘Venture-Backed’ w/ Frank Jessop, Director of Finance, Sensibill
Episode 10: Vendor Selection Considerations & Viewing the Finance Function from an Engineering Perspective w/ Gerti Dervishi, VP Finance at Flybits
Episode 9: The Process of Acquiring Companies as a Startup & Best Practices for Investor Relations w/ Ryan Levenberg, VP Finance at Q4 Systems Inc.
Episode 8: Raising VC Funding to Executing an $110M Acquisition + Demystifying the Progressive Roles of the Finance Leader within a Startupw/ Dwayne Walker, CFO at LookbookHQ
Episode 7: Going Through an Acquisition of an eCommerce Company & Keeping Both Sides of a Marketplace Happy w/ Elena Armstrong, Co-Founder & VP Finance at Exact Media
Episode 6: From Finance to Founding an IoT Startup & Bootstrapping vs. Raising Venture Capital w/ Sacha Sawaya, Co-Founder and CFO at Litmus Automation
Episode 5: Difference Between Being an Advisor vs Finance Leader for Tech Startups & When to Raise Capital w/ Eugene Bomba, CFO & VP Operations at ThoughtWire
Episode 4: Transitioning from Professional Services to Finance Leader of Pre-Revenue Tech Startup w/ Chris Parkes, CFO at NuraLogix
Episode 3: Why Finance & Operations go Together & Dealing with the Highly Regulated Financial Services Industry w/ Leen Li, Head of Finance at Wealthsimple
Episode 2: How Finance Scales Growing from 25 to 200+ Employees & Transfer Pricing w/ Les Cullen, Director Finance & Operations at TopHat
Episode 1: Managing Churn & Being Private Equity Backed w/ Daniel Israelsohn, VP Finance & Operations at Firmex
The Backbone is a podcast hosted by Shubham Datta, that explores the journey inside finance at a startup. Each episode features a finance leader (Director/VP, Finance or CFO) that:
- shares their story of how they entered the world of startups,
- explains what their company does
- describes unique challenges he/she faces in their role
